The Maccabaean

WE cannot speak of the beginning of this modern period without mentioning Dr. August Ludwig Frankl’s visit of six weeks to Palestine. in 1855, and also the book he wrote about his trip, in which he describes Jerusalem in the most vivid, but also in the darkest colors. This book must have been widely known in the author’s time, as can be judged from its translations into the various modern languages as well as in to the Hebrew. But nowadays it seems to have fallen into obscurity.* Frankl is such a great artist, and poet, he has such a gift for description 'that he carries the reader with him through his pilgrimage. He imparts to him his emotions about the Holy Land and his grief and sorrow for the conditions then existing. But his views ‚are far too pessimistic and betray a superficial judgment. He sees no hope for a better. future. Frankl, who no doubt was a great man, a noble and sincere man and even a good Jew, seems however, not to have been fit for the mission he undertook in Jerusalem. He was too foreign to the genuine Jewish life; his remoteness can be seen from his great astonishment at many Palestinian ceustons which are well known to all Jews. He could not penetrate into the psychology of the Palestinian Jews and know how to reform the old life to which they clung su tightly. Furthermore, Frankl belonged to the class of Jews in whom the hope for the future is dead. He looked upon the land which he came to visit as holy, but dead. It was to him a holy sepulchre, a grave where all our past is buried. The Jews of Palestine were to him the ruinous remnants of the past like the ruinous stones of the Kothel Ma’arabi (the Wail-

*It is by mere chance that I recently came across the book, and its reading left such a deep impression on me that it brought me to a study of this period, of which this paper is the outcome. I have gathered the facts relating to this and to 1882 from the periodicals of the times cencerned.

(Concluded from August Number)

ing Wall). But if Frankl was not a psychologist, or if he was not endowed with the power of bringing reform, he was at any rate a great poet, and was deeply moved by the sights of the Holy Land, by its ruins, and by its graves.- Very touching is the scene which Frankl describes when he perceived the Temple Mount for the first time. He seems to untold before our eyes’ a panoramic view of the whole history of Israel, which the sight of the ruined Temple had awakened in him, We are also deeply touched by Frankl’s feelings when entering Jerusalem. He exclaims with joy that the greatest wish of his life had been fulfilled. Very amusing is the incident which occurs to him as he enters Jerusalem. While Frankl was absorbed in reveries that the sight of 'the Holy City had awakened in him, he was suddenly seized by the collar of his great-coat by a man who brandished a long glittering knife before him. Says Frankl: “My reverie, from which I was suddenly aroused by this unexpected attack, gave place to a feeling of indescribable terror, and I was almost mechanically drawing my pistols from the holster, when the man quickly loosened his hold, lowered his arms, and with pale lips exclaimed: “ ‘Shma "Yisroel’ what are you doing?” Then the man explained to him that every Jewish pilgrim before he enters the city, must tear his dress from sorrow at its destruction, the same as he would do: on the occasion of the death of a relative. “So,” says Frankl, “I allowed Mr. Moshe Kural, who derives a small income from this office, a ‘krie cut,’ i. e., I allowed him to make a rent in my dress while I repeated after him the usual formula: ‘Zion is turned into a desert, it lies in ruins.’”

Frankl was sent to Jerusalem in 1856 by the Jewish Committee of Vienna in order to execute the plan of Baroness Lippet Herz Lemel, who wished to found a school in Jerusalem to the memory of her father. Foreseeing the many difficulties which he might encounter, both from the Turkish